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If you have ever visited St. Augustine, you might have noticed a large concentration of Victorian era homes just southwest of recognizable landmarks like the Bridge of Lions and the Cathedral Basilica. This is Lincolnville, a historically black neighborhood in America’s oldest city. Formed by St. Augustine’s freed slave population after the Civil War, Lincolnville was home to a thriving middle-class black community during the period of legalized segregation in early twentieth century Florida.

A stylized map depicting a developed lot in Lincolnville (1885). Excerpt from 1885 birdseye view of St. Augustine, Florida Map Collection, State Library of Florida.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and freed all enslaved peoples living in Union-occupied areas, which included St. Augustine–one of the few places in Florida to enforce emancipation during the Civil War. According Mary Anne Murray, an eye-witness who was interviewed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) some seventy years after emancipation: “All the slaveholders were ordered to release their slaves and allow them to gather in a large vacant lot west of St. Joseph’s Academy, where they were officially freed.” An estimated 672 slaves living in St. Augustine became freedmen at once, and the parcel became known as “liberation lot.” These liberated men and women would become the founders of Lincolnville. In the decades that followed, their descendants celebrated the anniversary of emancipation in jubilant fashion.

The freedmen of St. Augustine wasted no time in settling a neighborhood of their own, leasing numerous city lots along the marshy banks of the Maria Sanchez Creek in the mid to late 1860s. Initially referred to as “Africa,” the rapidly developing corridor was soon renamed “Lincolnville,” after the slain Civil War president. By the 1880s, many Lincolnville residents were property owners who built their own homes, businesses, and churches. Several blacks from Lincolnville served in public office up until the turn of the century when restrictive voting laws like poll taxes and literacy tests effectively disenfranchised African-Americans. The definitive end to black political participation in Lincolnville came in 1902, when resident John Papino was shot after winning election to the city council. No black officials would be elected to city government again until 1973. Barred from the ballot box and routinely shut out from many of the economic opportunities available to whites, African-Americans living in Lincolnville focused on investing in their community’s development.

Dawson C.M.E. Chapel under construction on 225 Orange Street in Lincolnville (1920s). There were at least 16 churches located in Lincolnville by the 1920s. Photo by Richard Twine.

Though intended to limit opportunity for African-Americans, the exclusionary conditions of segregation actually encouraged the growth of black enterprise initiatives. By the 1920s a lively commercial district of black-owned businesses had sprouted up around Washington St., making it the center of socialization in Lincolnville. “If you weren’t there on Saturday night, you hadn’t lived,” reminisced former civil rights activist and St. Augustine City Commissioner Henry Twine.

Richard Twine photographed this group of Lincolnville residents gathered together after a dance at the Old Fellows Lodge on 92 Washington St (1920s). Now a condominium, Odd Fellows Lodge was once the community watering hole, hosting proms, dances, and even celebrity performances by Ray Charles and Little Richard.

One Lincolnville entrepreneur, Frank Butler, who owned the Palace Market grocery store on 54 Washington St. where he often sold his customers goods on credit, became a well-known real-estate investor during a time when property deeds typically barred land sales to blacks. Having built up a rapport with city officials, Butler often received tips on tax sales and real-estate sales, advantages otherwise not extended to African-Americans. Longtime Lincolnville resident, Rosalie Gordon Mills, recalled that Butler “had a calling—a mission in life to succeed as a black man…. He knew how to deal with the race problem and took advantage of every opportunity.” Butler leased properties all over town to black-run businesses, allowed prospective homeowners to buy on credit, and even established “Butler Beach” (see our blog “Butler Beach and Jim Crow”), the only beach between Jacksonville and Daytona open to African-Americans during segregation.

Frank Butler standing behind the front desk of his College Park Realty Office on 54 ½ Washington St. in Lincolnville (1920s). Photo by Richard Twine.

In addition to the numerous business ventures undertaken by Butler, the Washington St. district also boasted the Ice Berg, a legendary pharmacy and soda shop managed by Arthur C. Forward. “Everything was good,” recalled former Lincolnville resident Debbie McDade who insisted the Ice Berg sold the best ice creams sodas “in the world.” Three barber shops, six grocery stores in addition to Butler’s Palace Market, four cafes, and four dry cleaning shops filled out the rest of the commercial hub. Black professionals like dentist Rudolph Gordon; medical doctors Leon Reid, T.G. Freeland, S.J.E. Farmer; and pharmacists Otis J. Mills and Robert E. Smith provided trusted healthcare in a neighborhood historian Diana Edwards described as a place where “extended families looked out after everybody.”

Lincolnville residents Pauline Sanders and John Eckles on their wedding day (1920s). Photograph by Richard Twine.

Additionally, photographer Richard A. Twine’s studio on 62 Washington St. attracted regular customers interested in professional portraits. When he was not working in his studio, Twine often took his camera to the streets of 1920s Lincolnville, documenting scenes of daily life at the height of the predominately black middle-class suburb’s business boom. Damaged by fire, Twine’s studio was slated for demolition in 1988 before the work crew discovered a collection of 103 glass negatives in the attic. Preserved by the St. Augustine Historical Society, and temporarily loaned to the State Archives of Florida for duplication, these rare slides illuminate the character of Lincolnville’s history.

As federal courts began striking down segregation laws as unconstitutional in the 1950s and 60s, Lincolnville became the site of civil rights organization in St. Augustine. But, after integration came a decline in the number of black owned homes and businesses in Lincolnville. Although Lincolnville had never been entirely segregated– whites had always owned some shops and houses in the area– by the 1980s black residents of Lincolnville started selling and renting their properties in search of better opportunities elsewhere. The community became more commercialized and scattered, with much of the flavor and family-like atmosphere of 1920s Lincolnville living on only in Richard Twine’s photographs. However, longtime St. Augustine locals recognized the historic value of Lincolnville– in 1991, the Lincolnville Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Dr. Robert B. Hayling, an African-American dentist who played an instrumental role in the fight for civil rights in St. Augustine, died Sunday, December 20, 2015. He was 86.

Dr. Robert B. Hayling (standing) speaking at a meeting between civil rights leaders and Governor Haydon Burns. Seated in the front row (L to R) are B.J. Johnson representing Dr. Martin Luther King, Loucille Plummer of St. Augustine, and attorney John Due representing the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (photo 1965).

Dr. Hayling grew up in Tallahassee, where his father taught at Florida A & M University. Hayling himself attended that institution, then joined the United States Air Force in 1951. After serving his tour of duty, Hayling enrolled in Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee to study dentistry. The Nashville student sit-in movement was in full swing during his time at Meharry, and the backlash against it struck close to Hayling when the windows of his dormitory were shattered by a dynamite blast directed at the home of one of his teachers across the street.

In 1960, Hayling moved to St. Augustine to begin his practice. He immediately became involved in local civil rights activism, serving as adviser to the area’s NAACP Youth Council and a local leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. St. Augustine was at that time preparing to celebrate its 400th anniversary, and African-Americans were all but excluded from many of the formal proceedings. Dr. Hayling successfully urged federal officials to insist on an integrated celebration. When Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived in St. Augustine to dedicate a restored building as part of the festivities, two tables at the banquet at the Ponce de Leon Hotel were reserved for African-American guests.

The reaction from segregationists was intense. Hayling and three of his companions were beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally in September 1963, and the dentist’s home was fired into in February 1964, killing his dog and narrowly missing his pregnant wife.

As summer vacation approached in 1964, Dr. Hayling began inviting young African-American students from around the country to visit St. Augustine and participate in the effort to break the grip of Jim Crow over local stores, restaurants, and beaches. Many students took up Hayling’s invitation and helped put St. Augustine on the front pages of newspapers all over the United States through their activism. Hayling himself was arrested on June 29, 1964 for “contributing to the delinquency” of minors – students involved in the protests.

Confrontation between segregationists and integrationists at a whites-only beach in St. Augustine (1964).

Publicity for the events in St. Augustine that summer helped bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but Dr. Hayling wasn’t finished. His involvement with civil rights activism had badly damaged his dental practice, but he moved to Cocoa Beach to continue his own career and help other civil rights activists find work. He moved to Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s, where he practiced dentistry until his retirement.

Dr. Robert B. Hayling was inducted into the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2014 along with James Weldon Johnson and A. Philip Randolph. A bronze plaque testifying to Dr. Hayling’s contributions hangs in the lobby of the Capitol.

Whoever said law books are boring clearly hasn’t read many city and town ordinances from the 1800s or early 1900s. Local governments are closest to the people, so naturally the laws they create often regulate the most mundane, common behavior. You can learn a lot about a community and the challenges it faced in a particular time period by studying its local ordinances. In doing the reading, however, you’re likely to find a few that give you a chuckle. Here are a few gems from cities and towns around Florida:

At this very moment, two 15th-century Spanish caravels are tied up at St. Marks about 20 miles south of Tallahassee. Most folks will recognize their names – the Niña and the Pinta – because these were two of the ships used by Christopher Columbus and his crew to sail that proverbial ocean blue in 1492.

You can put down the phone, though – there’s no need to raise the alarm. The Spanish haven’t come for a third colonial occupation of Florida. Rather, these ships are replicas created by the Columbus Foundation as floating museums dedicated to educating the public about Christopher Columbus and the ships he used to explore parts of the Western Hemisphere.

The two ships and their crews are currently on a tour of the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Seaboard this winter and spring. At each port of call, they offer tours of the ships, which describe how the ships were sailed in the 15th century, what life was like for the sailors, and how the ships operate today in their replica form.

The Niña and the Pinta will remain in port at St. Marks until February 22nd, and will then sail on to Marco Island, where they will be in port from February 27th to March 1st. The ships will be anchored at Vero Beach on the Atlantic Coast from March 6-11, and then at Ponce Inlet from March 13-17. These dates are subject to change, of course – we recommend you visit the Columbus Foundation’s website at thenina.com for full details about the ships, their schedule, and tours.

With this fine-looking pair of Spanish caravels in port so close by, we at the State Library and Archives cannot help but think about some of the excellent resources we hold from the Spanish colonial era, several of which are available through Florida Memory. The oldest object in the State Archives, for example, is a 1589 map depicting the English privateer Sir Francis Drake’s 1586 raid on St. Augustine. This hand-colored map is the earliest-known depiction of a European settlement in what is now the United States. It was created by Baptista Boazio, an Italian cartographer working for the English at this time.

Baptista Boazio’s map of Sir Francis Drake’s 1586 raid on St. Augustine. This is the oldest item held by the State Archives of Florida (1589).

The Archives also holds a large collection of original records used by settlers to defend their titles to their land following the official transfer of Florida to the United States in 1821. One of the conditions of the treaty between Spain and the U.S. was that the United States government would honor existing land grants given by the Spanish Crown. The U.S. Board of Land Commissioners was established in 1822 to review claims and verify titles to these land grants, which claimants supported through deeds, correspondence, maps, and other materials establishing their ownership. These dossiers of material were retained by the Commission, and are now in the possession of the State Archives. The colorful maps and drawings alone make the collection worth a look, but for families with ties to these original claimants they can be great for genealogical research as well. Florida Memory has digitized the Spanish Land Grant collection in its entirety, and the images are available online.

Map from the land grant of John Bolton, part of the collection of Spanish land grants at the State Archives of Florida (Series 990). These grants are also available in digital form on Florida Memory.

Students of the Spanish colonial era will also find the East Florida Papers a very useful resource. A complete copy of the original records of East Florida held by the Library of Congress is available at the State Archives, along with an index. The documents include an index to Royal Decrees, financial records, and correspondence between Spanish officials on matters such as runaway slaves, the militia, religious authorities, and the transfer of the Florida Archives to the United States. The collection’s catalog record contains a fuller description of the contents.

Nobody lays out their welcome mat like Florida. The Sunshine State plays host to millions of visitors each year – 94.7 million in 2011 alone, according to official statistics. Every guest is important, but when the President of the United States comes to stay, you can imagine the press coverage goes up a few clicks.

The same holds true for the President-elect, as the 1921 visit of President-elect Warren Gamaliel Harding demonstrates. Harding, a Republican Senator from Ohio, had just defeated Governor James M. Cox, also of Ohio, in a landmark election fought mainly over the World War I policies of President Woodrow Wilson. With the November 1920 election ended and the weather turning colder, Harding decided to take a much-needed vacation in Florida.

Harding arrived in St. Augustine to a hearty welcome from the locals. Security measures were much more relaxed in those days, and the newspapers reported that Harding shook hands with people all the way through the train station before motoring off to the Ponce de Leon Hotel. There, he met with Senator Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, who planned to take Harding aboard his personal 90-foot houseboat, the Victoria, for a cruise down the Florida coast.

The houseboat party included Frelinghuysen, Harding, and a number of close Harding confidants, including Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico, former Ambassador to Mexico Henry Fletcher, George Christian (Harding’s private secretary), and Harding’s campaign manager, Harry M. Daugherty.

For two weeks, Harding divided his time between relaxing and meeting some of his new Floridian constituents. While calling at Daytona, the President-elect attended a patriotic pageant given by the local citizens. He turned down an official reception at Miami, but invited officers from the local Masonic Lodges and the American Legion to meet him in front of his cottage at the Flamingo Hotel. The Miami News reported that Harding shook hands and greeted each person individually before making a brief address.

When he wasn’t meeting with the locals, President-elect Harding kept busy with two main amusements: fishing and golfing. The Victoria had been stocked with tackle well before he arrived, and Harding took advantage of the boat’s lazy cruise southward to fish for amber-jack, sail-fish, and even barracuda. When the Victoria was in port, Harding and his cohorts hit whatever golf links were closest.

President-elect Warren G. Harding playing golf at Miami Beach (1921).

Harding ended his Florida vacation in early February and began preparing for his inauguration and his program for bringing “normalcy,” as he called it, to the United States. Once President, the Ohioan would return to Florida several times. That should come as no surprise, of course. You know what they say about getting Florida sand in your shoes. Once it’s there, you can’t help but come back.

Warren G. Harding reeling in a fish off the Florida coast. The original photo is undated; it could have been from any of Harding’s trips to Florida between 1921 and 1923.

Do you remember when someone famous came to your Florida community? Tell us about it by leaving a comment below or by posting on our Facebook page!

Some things never change, including the American taste for gadgetry and new technology. Today, we fiddle with tablets and powerful cell phones. Barely more than 100 years ago, electricity itself was the bauble of the day. As in our own era, businessmen of yesteryear used the latest technology to attract new customers, especially in the tourist industry. Henry Flagler’s Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine provides perhaps one of the most humorous examples of how people approach new innovations with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty.

Ponce de Leon Hotel as seen from the nearby Alcazar Hotel in St. Augustine (circa 1910s).

Flagler built the Ponce de Leon as part of a chain of hotels along his ever-growing Florida East Coast Railway, which was working its way down Florida’s Atlantic Coast. He hoped to induce the wealthy upper crust of northeastern tourists to come down and spend their winters in the mild splendor of the Sunshine State. To do this, the railway would have to be fast and efficient, and the hotels would have to be exquisite. Flagler commissioned New York architects John Carrere and Thomas Hastings to design a veritable palace for his guests to enjoy. The architects sketched out a grand building in the Spanish Renaissance style, and construction began on the morning of December 1, 1885.

Dining room at the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine (1891).

The site of the hotel was in itself an innovation. The area had been a marshy waste before Flagler’s engineers began preparing the ground for the foundation. Some observers feared the great Henry Flagler was bound to make a fool of himself by choosing such difficult terrain. Historian Sidney Walter Martin has written that someone once asked Flagler point-blank why he chose the relatively low-lying St. Augustine as the site for his grand palatial hotel. Flagler reputedly replied with a story. There had once been a good, loyal church member, Flagler said, who lived a very sober, pious life, until one day he decided to go off on a drunken spree, and he behaved very badly. When the man’s pastor questioned him about his behavior, he replied, ‘I’ve been giving all my days to the Lord hitherto, and now I’m taking one for myself.’ Flagler explained that in building the Ponce de Leon Hotel in such an unusually difficult location, he was doing much the same.

Parlor room at the Ponce de Leon Hotel (1891).

And once it was finished, who could blame him? The Ponce de Leon was truly a Spanish palace, with courts, nooks for reading and repose, tropical gardens, fountains, towers – everything necessary to impress even the most expensive and luxurious tastes. The hotel opened on January 10, 1888, with a total of 450 sleeping apartments of varying sizes and designs.

View of a fountain through an arch at the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine (1930).

Two innovations in the new hotel were of particular curiosity to Flagler’s first customers. Each room was equipped with steam heat, which to many seemed an odd fit for a Florida hotel. The system would not see a great deal of use, of course, but imagine the satisfaction of the guests on the days when it was needed! The other novelty was the presence of electrical lights in every room. Many of Flagler’s guests were not yet acquainted with the concept of having electrical lights in their personal space, let alone being the ones to operate the switches. At first the hotel was forced to hire extra staff to turn the lights off and on for its guests, because they were afraid of being shocked!

Interior view of the Ponce de Leon Hotel at St. Augustine (1959).

Over time, the mystique of electric-lit bedrooms faded, but the hotel itself continued to impress. The Ponce de Leon was one of the few great hotels of its kind to survive the Great Depression. During World War II, the grand building was used as a training center for the Coast Guard. In 1968, it became the center of the newly established Flagler College. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and it became a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2006.

What is your favorite place to visit on Florida’s Atlantic Coast? Fernandina? Miami Beach? Cape Canaveral? We’d like to know. Leave us a comment below or share your Atlantic Coast favorites on our Facebook page.

The legend of Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon’s quest to find the Fountain of Youth is one of the most popular stories in Florida history and culture. Books, paintings, movies, and even live pageants depict old Ponce as the guy who was convinced he would find a fountain in Florida whose waters would turn back the hands of time and keep anyone who drank from it or bathed in it young. He never found the fountain, of course, or else we’d refer you to him for the full story. We can, however, tell you a bit about Ponce’s exploration of Florida and the fountains of youth his journey has inspired over the years since his departure.

Every Sunday, worshipers belonging to the oldest Catholic parish in the United States file into the St. Augustine Cathedral Basilica, where mass has been celebrated in some form or fashion for nearly 450 years. As timeless as this sturdy building may appear to the visitor, however, its history bears witness to many instances of warfare, disaster, and change that have shaped the city of St. Augustine.

This engraved, hand-colored map drawn by Baptista Boazio in 1589 depicts a raid on St. Augustine by the English navigator Sir Francis Drake. Boazio lived in London from about 1585 to 1603, illustrating accounts of English expeditions and campaigns.

The British only owned Florida for a brief moment (1763-1783), but during that time they did take a stab at turning the territory into a productive colony. In 1764, the British Parliament set aside £500 (British pounds sterling) as a bounty for cultivating silk, cotton, and indigo in East Florida, and authorized generous land grants for citizens who stepped forward to develop these industries.

A General Map of the Southern British Colonies (1776). Note the separation of East and West Florida.

Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a Scotsman and a physician, convinced a number of his wealthy friends in Britain to take advantage of these offers and start a new colony in East Florida. Turnbull planned to employ a number of Greeks from Asia Minor as laborers for his new venture. He chose a Greek labor force because he felt they would be more accustomed to the warm climate they would encounter in Florida, and because he believed he would be able to convince a good number of them to leave the Ottoman Empire, where labor conditions were tough.

Millions of visitors and locals alike enjoy Florida’s beaches every year, along with the public facilities built to enhance them. That privilege was restricted for many years, however, by Jim Crow laws that prohibited African-Americans from sharing those beaches with their fellow citizens who were white. In some areas, public authorities provided separate beaches designated for use by African-Americans, such as Miami’s Virginia Beach, shown below.

A woman stands by the sign for Virginia Beach in Miami, which was designated for African-American use only. The sign had been blown down in a recent storm (1950).

Elsewhere, private individuals took the initiative. African-American businessman Frank B. Butler responded to beach segregation in northeast Florida by purchasing and opening his own beach on Anastasia Island.

An interior view of the Palace Market in the predominantly African-American Lincolnville district of St. Augustine. Owner Frank B. Butler stands at right (circa 1930s).

Butler, who owned the Palace Market in the Lincolnville district of St. Augustine, began buying land on Anastasia Island in 1927. Over time, he developed a residential subdivision, casino, motel, and beach resort for African-Americans. By 1948, at least eleven African-American-owned businesses operated in the area, and “Butler Beach” was a thriving tourist attraction. This was reputedly the only beach between Jacksonville and Daytona that African-Americans were allowed to use. These photos depict Butler Beach at the height of its popularity in the 1950s.

Cars pack the parking area at Butler Beach, as visitors enjoy a sunny day on Florida’s Atlantic coast (circa 1950s).

Visitors pose in front of the bath house at Butler Beach on Anastasia Island (circa 1950s).

The lifeguard station at Butler Beach (circa 1950s).

Later, Butler Beach was operated by the Florida Park Service. Eventually, St. Johns County took over the park, which it still operates today for the enjoyment of all citizens (circa 1960s).

Teachers, you may find our Black History Month resource guide to be helpful when planning for lessons about civil rights, Jim Crow segregation, or other aspects of the African-American experience in the United States.

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